Book Review: Cyber Shogun Revolution, by Peter Tieryas

The third book, set in author Peter Tieryas’ United States of Japan universe, Cyber Shogun Revolution continues down of the path established by the first two books in the loosely connected series (United States of Japan, Mecha Samurai Empire) of careful worldbuilding, character development, and plotting.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the author. This book moves the series forward from its initial premise that Japan and its Axis partner Germany invaded and occupied the United States and Canada in 1946. In Cyber Shogun Revolution, it is an alternate 2019 and the two erstwhile allies have settled into a not-so-cold piece. One of the two protagonists, ace giant Mecha pilot, Reiko Morikawa participates in the overthrow of the corrupt United States of Japan governor and Nazi sympathizer, with the initials Daigo Tamura (it seems the author is having a little satiric fun here.)

Rieko soon teams up with Bishop Wakana, an honest cop working for the secret police, Tokko. The trail leads then through of maze of conspiracies within conspiracies and wheels within wheels. 

The only link is the legendary assassin, Bloody Mary, who has left a trail of dead Nazis in her wake.

It’s not a cliché to say here that nothing is what it seems to be here, and that is a measure of Tieryas’ plotting and storytelling skills. Once again, his characters protagonist and antagonist inhabit a fully fleshed-out world. I also like how everything is not black and white. The chief group of antagonists, for example, truly believe they are doing good.

This is an excellent work of speculative fiction and alternate history. There have been other the-Axis-win-the-war books and series – it’s a whole subgenre, in fact, but this takes it to new levels.

Highly Recommended.

What’s Next?

I’m a little -a lot – late in getting this review out. Despite being triple-vaxxed and wearing my mask, I got hit with the coronavirus last January. It wasn’t a lot of fun and almost a month later, I still have a hacking cough. I consider myself fortunate that I was boosted before I got hit with it; if not, it could’ve been much worse. If you’re one of the 10% who is unvaccinated, perhaps this is something you might want to reconsider.

A thought.

I suppose also I’m a little burned out. When you write for a living and then try to write a monthly review column (as well as read the books), it’s a lot. I also want to start writing fiction again, including a possible sequel to War Plan Crimson, but there just hasn’t been time.

I’ll keep the doing this blog – just not as frequently. I’ll be back soon. Be good to yourselves and each other.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

One from my Shelves: Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson

Imagine you lived in a small town and suddenly it was yanked away from your reality and dropped into another, while familiar is not your own. 

That’s the opening of Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson.  Wilson is a capable author who is responsible for the excellent Burning Paradise reviewed earlier in this space. 

Early one morning, the residents of the town of Two Rivers, Michigan, wake up to find themselves cut off from the outside world. The power has failed and the roads are cut off. We quickly find out, thanks to an experiment at a local research facility gone awry, they have been shifted across timelines. 

Wilson takes great care to paint a picture of the world the town’s residents have landed in. It’s a theocratic version of North America called the Consolidated Republic, built on a form of Gnostic Christianity that briefly flourished in the Middle Ages, but lasted in this reality. The Republic is dominated by its religious secret police, the proctors.

The Republic and the proctors quickly occupy and clamp down on the town, treating it with a mixture of curiosity and horror.   The sudden emergence of the town and its residents is a direct challenge to be quashed ruthlessly.  They act of out fear. They see Twin Rivers as a threat to everything they stand for.  

Meanwhile, the residents of Two Rivers are faced with a world, not of their making.  How they react is based is as varied as the individual character. Some individuals, like school teacher and main protagonist Dexter Graham, try to adapt but become openly suspicious. He also manages to fall in love with  Evelyn Woodward, one of the academics whom the Republic has sent to study the town. Evelyn, in turn, has her eyes opened by what she sees.

Wilson has an eye for detail that paints a picture of the town of Two Rivers as an idealized town stuck under a malevolent alien microscope.  He also takes great care to detail the new world that we reader finds ourselves in.

He also keeps the plot moving along enough to sustain the reader’s interest.

Recommended reading. 

What's Next?

I apologize for taking so long between reviews.  I'll try to do better.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Until then, please take care of yourselves.

Book Review: Daggers in Darkness, by S.M. Stirling

It’s been five years since we last met American super-spies Luz O’Malley Arostegui and Ciara Whelan, in
the previous installment of S.M. Stirling’s  Black Chamber series, Shadows of Annihilation.  

In the meantime, the world has settled into an uneasy three-way peace. On one side: the Oceanic Alliance of the United States; the British Empire now led out of New Delhi; and the rump government of Overseas France, headquartered in Algiers. On the second side, the European Central Powers, led by the German Empire.  On the third side, the Japanese Empire. Each party is armed with the ultimate weapon, the “horror gas,” which brought Germany to the brink of victory in 1916.  

So it is where we find ourselves when Daggers in Darkness opens. The novel begins a new trilogy in the larger series, set in the aftermath of the Great War. In this timeline, Teddy Roosevelt won the 1912 election and remains president into the current year of 1922.  He has presided over a massive peacetime expansion of the U.S. economy and military and a restructuring of society.

Agents Arostegui and Whelan, now very much in the family way, are brought out of semi-retirement to investigate a sudden flood of Chinese antiques into the United States that are being used to finance the construction of a horror gas plant somewhere in Central Asia, by persons unknown.  This threatens to upset the delicate Mexican standoff between the three Great Power blocks. 

We join our heroes as they go on this hazardous mission, adopting the cover of a family-owed firm of antique traders. They first travel deep into San Francisco’s Chinatown, and then across the Pacific by airship to Shanghai, with family and friends in tow.  In the process, we benefit from Sterling’s world-building prowess; where we are perhaps overindulged a little on the sumptuous detail. There are no missteps in terms of technology or societal progress in this alternate world. Stirling is also quite possibly the grandmaster of the literary stall, a plot device by which the action is slowed down to make a point. In this case, it’s five pages dedicated to a parade in San Francisco, relatively early in the novel, which is the backdrop to a quiet but significant development.

The action rolls along in San Francisco and later in Shanghai, so fans of blood and thunder won’t be disappointed here. There is a lot of richly described action to go around.  Weaved around this are more literary and pop-culture references that will put a stupid grin on your face when you catch them. Daggers in Darkness is a  careful read that richly rewards the careful reader. 

Daggers in Darkness, the first in a new trilogy from a master storyteller, merely whets our appetites for what is to come. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment of the adventures of Agents Arostegui and Whelan and everyone else from the Black Chamber.

Highly Recommended for both fans of the series and of the genre.

What's Next?

Next month, I'll have another piece of alternate history to review and discuss...

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Until then, please take care of  yourselves.

One From My Bookshelves: Alternities, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Alternities, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell, is one of my favorite alternate history novels.  It is set across multiple worlds that have split into alternates, all linked by the unworldly maze that connects them. 

The world of the protagonist, Rayne Wallace is remarkably different from our own.  The government of the United States on this world, the accidental discoverer and sole holder of the multiple worlds secret is an impoverished, isolationist, technologically backward country with a president bound and determined to finish matters once and for all with that world’s Soviet Union. Rayne is employed by the government as a “runner” to transit the maze to bring back advanced technologies and medicines. His world, the so-called Home Alternity, maintains a network of gatehouses throughout the different worlds it has color-coded.

I want to talk a bit about world-building here. Readers of this space will know that this is one of what I hold as a hallmark of excellent fiction of any genre.  To hold the reader’s attention, especially their sense of disbelief in a subgenre such as alternate history, the writer needs to be able to build a credible world. To Kube-McDowell’s credit, the author takes great care in showing us the Home Aternity and giving us a feeling of what it is to inhabit that world, as well as the other alternate worlds the story takes us to. This is done by emphasizing the little details such as clippings from newspapers or other things that the author lets us see in passing.

Problems surface when Rayne gets assigned to a more technologically and socially advanced but just as flawed version of the United States, in Alternity Blue (it’s not us, for once; we’re Alternity Orange) which is once again delineated through the smallest of details. He meets and falls for a woman, Shan, who is connected with sort of a national neighborhood watch.  It is this way that he falls into the hands of the Alternity Blue’s authorities.  As authorities go, they are not a bad lot, but I do believe they react realistically and humanely given who and what Rayne represents.

I’m not going to give much more away plot-wise, and how the situation between the United States and the Soviet Union plays out in Rayne’s home alternity, except to say first the ending is satisfying and not altogether unrealistic. Also satisfying is the point of divergence that causes the worlds to split, as is the realization that there may be something else far larger at play here.

Highly recommended and very much worthwhile for the online hunt.

 What’s Next:

I have three new books that I will be reviewing over the next few months:

• Daggers in Darkness, The fourth entry in S.M. Stirling’s Tales of the Black Chamber Series, featuring the adventures of American Black Chamber super-spies Luz O’Malley Arostegui and Ciara Whelan. It’s ten years later and a new threat to Teddy Roosevelt’s alternate America has emerged;
• The third book in Peter Tieryas’ United States of Japan series, Cyber Shogun Revolution, where the Axis won World War Two and that means one thing: lots and lots of mechas, and, finally;
• Dixie Curtain, by Mark Ciccone, an intriguing look at a world where the South won the Civil War and North America is divided a Berlin War, writ large. Peace talks are in the offing between the Union and Southern leaders, but will they happen?

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Until then, please take care of  yourselves.

Book Review: Shadows of Annihilation, by S.M. Stirling

In the third book of S.M. Stirling’s alternate history of the Great War, Shadows of Annihilation, the shoe is firmly on the other foot. In the latest instalment, our heroes, the intrepid American Black Chamber super-spies Luz O’Malley Arostegui and Ciara Whelan must foil a plot aimed (where else? ) squarely at America. 

In the first two instalments of the trilogy, Arostegui and Whelan operated behind enemy lines. But now they are on home turf and must stop a team composed of Luz’s old enemy, Horst von Drucker, real-life stormtrooper Ernst Rohm, and a band of scraggily Mexican banditos that look like they came from Central Casting.

Here be Spoilers:

The enemy's target is a large industrial complex in the Mexican Protectorate (in this universe, where Teddy Roosevelt won re-election in 1912, the US has occupied Mexico since 1916), operating under the ominous name of the Dakota Project. Since using the so-called “horror gas” on France and England and its attempted use on the US east coast in 1916 in the first book of the series, Theatre of Spies, Imperial Germany has had pretty much Europe to itself. 

The gas has become the nuclear deterrent of its time, with neither side daring to use it on the other for fear of the consequences. However, the US and the Entente’s stocks are based on what has been stolen from the Germans, and they are slowly becoming inert, hence the need for the Dakota Project. 

When Arostegui and Whelan are sent into Mexico to assess the security of the vital project, they initially have no idea that the Germans are in-country and pose a threat to the project. What we get instead, is kind of an alternate-history travelogue, showing in great detail how Mexico has benefitted under America’s benign but firm hand.  It’s the kind of world-building that Stirling excels at. 

Unfortunately, it’s only about halfway through the proceedings that our protagonists realize that something is amiss. As the scattered reports come in, they put two and two together. 

The book's structure relies upon two widely divergent points of view (Drucker vs. Arostegui and Whelan) and only seems to really come together in the final reel. Personally, this makes for a little dry reading at times. 

These criticisms aside, Shadows of Annihilation is a good book. It benefits from solid characterizations and world-building but perhaps could’ve done with more attention to Drucker and company, as they almost seem to become missing in action at times.

Nevertheless, this is a necessary read for followers of the series and a recommended one for fans of the genre.

What's Next

I'll have another work of alternate history to share with you next month.  As a note, I've paid for most of the books that I've reviewed in this space out of my own pocket.  If you're an author and would like me to review your genre work (alternate history only please!) please reach out to me at somersethousepress@gmail.com. 

 In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Until then, please take care of  yourselves.

Reviewing Season Two of For All Mankind

I’ve just finished watching Season Two of For All Mankind on Apple TV+.  It comes from the fertile mind of Ronald D. Moore. Last year, in season one, Moore and his writers asked the question, “What if the Soviet Union landed on the moon first?”

The second season starts by asking, “What next?” When season two starts it’s the early 1980s, and Ronald Regan is already into his second term as president, having been elected in 1976. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have large south polar lunar bases at Shackleton Crater and the Cold War is at a boil. The two adversaries are staring at each other across the crater.   The continuing tensions over the ice deposits in the bottom of the crater make the Americans decide it's time to send in the Marines.

Things go badly from there.

The world Moore and his writers have crafted is a mixture of the familiar and the tantalizingly off-center. John Lennon is still alive, but the Middle East peace deal brokered by Jimmy Carter never happened because Carter never became president.  Because of the accelerated pace of the space program, technologies such as electric cars and cell phones appear decades earlier than in our timeline, with NASA becoming self-funding off the patents. However, some things remain the same as in our timeline, when the KAL 007 shootdown occurs on schedule in September 1983 with major repercussions.  It’s an entirely believable reality.

Our protagonists have moved on. After the death of their son in the first season, Ed and his wife Karen Baldwin have adopted a Vietnamese girl, Kelly as their daughter.  Gordo Stephens and his wife Tracey have not only broken up but have moved into different orbits. Other characters, such as Ellen, who is left on the moon to give the first season’s valedictory address, also move forward.

In that sense, Season Two takes things onward and upward, culminating in a lunar standoff reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the Soviets blockading the Americans. How this is successfully resolved is a demonstration of excellent storytelling. 

Moore and his writers handle character growth mostly well, except the business involving Karen that seems to move on a predictable trajectory.  Meanwhile Kelly, after some serious reflecting, is definitely being set up for a larger role in Season Three. Ellen, who by the end of Season Two is the head of NASA, also seems to be set up for a greater role next season – that is, if her private life remains private. 

I  enjoyed Season Two. There is a lot more I could talk about here, but I’ll restrain myself. The highlights of the second season are the character arcs of Gordo and Tracey.  Redemption has never been so bittersweet.  Their actions frame the third season, which as of this writing, has already been greenlit. I'm eagerly awaiting more of what the season's final episode pre-credits teaser is promising us.

This show demonstrates how a believable alternate history can be constructed. If you’ve not watched it yet, you’re missing out. Highly recommended.

What’s Next?

Next month, I will have a review of Shadows of Annihilation, the third book (so far) in S.M. Stirling’s alternate history of the Great War, which continues the adventures of American Black Chamber super-spies Luz O’Malley Arostegui and Ciara Whelan. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Until then, please take care of  yourselves.

Book Review: Winds of Wrath, by Taylor Anderson

Well, it had to come, didn’t it? In this post, I'll be looking at the 15th and final instalment of Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series, Winds of Wrath.  For those who are unfamiliar with the series, Destroyermen follows the adventures of captain Matthew Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker, an elderly American destroyer thrust from the Second World War in the Pacific to a parallel world where they are suddenly fighting a different but just as deadly war.

Note: Spoilers Ahead:

Winds of Wrath finds the ancient enemy of Reddy's Lemurian allies, the Grik, has been all but defeated in Africa. However, one holdout Grik general, Esshk,  remains with his army, and he has a lot of fight left in him.  

Much of the action has shifted west to the Caribbean and the showdown with the fascist League of Tripoli and their allies, the Holy Dominion. On the land, General Shinya's Allied army is driving towards the Dominion’s capital of New Granada. Meanwhile, the hastily-assembled Allied fleet under Reddy is about to meet the League’s task force of modern battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

The ensuing action on land, sea, and air is fast and furious. Author Taylor packs a lot of action into this, the final volume, and is perhaps his work as a storyteller here is among his best as he puts it on display as he invites us to become almost an active participant.  It’s Taylor’s habit to knock off a couple of main characters in each book; expect a lot more of that here. And be warned: there are a couple of shocks coming. This is especially hard because the author spent the series developing their character arcs and we've become invested with them, so when it happens – umph!

I also like how Anderson has engaged in a bit more world-building here, which frankly, I wish he would’ve done earlier.  We find, for example, that this world in the grips of an ice age, which is behind the League’s drive for Lebensraum.

Like all good things, the series has to end, as Taylor points out in his afterward. I understand that there may be some dissatisfaction with how the book and series ended. Honestly, without giving away the ending, I think is this ending the most logical outcome, given the weight of forces deployed against the Allies. I can’t really imagine Reddy and company charging into the Mediterranean for one final war of liberation. It just isn’t possible and wouldn’t ring true from a storytelling standpoint. That being said, can we expect further adventures in this world?  We just might, according to Taylor. 

I hope so.  Winds of Wrath is an enjoyable, fitting conclusion to the Destroyermen series. Highly Recommended.

What’s Next?

I apologize for missing the last month. I’m currently watching the second season of For All Mankind, now airing on Apple TV+. It picks up a decade after the first season with a fully established Jamestown lunar colony, Ronald Reagan in the White House four years early, and Cold War tensions at an all-time high. 

 I am loving it and will have a more in-depth review for you later.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Book Review: From the Ashes: An Alternate History Novel, by Sandra Saidak

Here we have another novel, From the Ashes: An Alternate History Novel, by Sandra Saidak, where the Nazis have won the Second World War.  Not only have they taken over Europe, but they have also taken over the world (I wonder what their former Japanese allies would have to say to that).

I’ll come right out and admit it: I don’t like this book very much. I really tried to like it, but there were too many things that got in the way. And that’s too bad because there are some positive points about this novel.

Author Saidak builds from an imaginative standpoint based on the historical fact that had the Nazis won, they had planned to establish museums in the perverse memory of the cultures they obliterated.  It is in one of these museums dedicated to the memory of the Jews,  that a group of young university students of the Reich’s elite gather to explore the shards of Jewish culture.

Okay, so far, so good.

But suddenly, things get out of hand. Both for the characters and the novel they inhabit. Suddenly our chief protagonist Adolf Goebbels (an imaginative name) gets mixed up in a revolution against the Nazis.  Quickly, perhaps too quickly, not only does Adolf become a Rabbi, but he also becomes a leader of the revolution.  Surely, the Ministry of Enforced Irony is working overtime here.

The writing and plot are a lot like that:  forced, plodding, and pedantic. Where the author could use a light touch, she instead hits with a sledgehammer. And where she should be showing, building out a world that has been under the Nazi jackboot for generations, she tells. Showing is the mark of a good storyteller, where all of the physical senses are engaged by showing what the protagonist’s reactions and feelings are to their environment.  Telling is simply that: telling. Unfortunately, in this instance, Saidiak does too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

In summation, a good premise, poorly executed. 

What's Next?

Next month, I'll have another review for you.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Happy New Year: Looking Ahead

The year 2020 could not have ended too soon.  It was like an unwelcome houseguest that had overstayed its welcome.  From COVID-19, to the continuing sad, sorry saga of Donald Trump and the the civil unrest that gripped much of the world over racial inequality, I think we will be glad to bid good riddance to the year. 

Nevertheless, 2020 is almost over, which is perhaps the best thing that can be said of it.  I believe that 2021 will be a better year and am certainly looking forward to it.  In terms of my reading schedule, I am looking forward to a significant reviewing schedule, including:

• From the Ashes, by Sandra Saidak, is a novel that takes place roughly a century after the final victory by the Third Reich. I am currently reading this novel, and I will review it next month in this space.
• Winds of Wrath, by Taylor Anderson, is the final installment in his 15-part epic Destroyermen series that has followed the adventures of Captain Matthew Reddy and the crew of the time lost USS Walker. I’ve been following this hugely enjoyable series since it first appeared and will be looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you.
• Shadows of Annihilation, by S.M. Stirling, is the latest entry in the author’s action-packed alternate First World War series, furthering the adventures of ace American superspies Luz O’Malley and Ciara Whelan.
• Finally, expect a review of the second season of For All Mankind, the alternate history of the space race, premiering February 19, 2021, on AppleTV+   Ronald Regan is in the Oval Office and the Cold War is getting hot on the moon. 

Thank you for staying with the blog for the over ten years that I have been writing it.  It has been, to quote the Grateful Dead, a long strange trip. I hope that you will join me in the New Year and that 2021 will be both safe and productive for you all. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Book Review: The Oppenheimer Alternative, by Robert J. Sawyer

This is not a perfect book, but nonetheless, I quite enjoyed it. 

The Oppenheimer Alternative is a biographical piece of alternate history, expertly researched and written by author Sawyer. It closely follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer as he led the research effort under the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb and the period. He emerges as a fully-fleshed out historical character, warts and all, which is a testament to the author’s storytelling abilities.

It’s something of a slow burn to get the meat of the novel and the point where our history spits from that of the novel. Much of the early part of the novel is spent in the careful building of relationships (and conflicts) with historical personages such as General Leslie Groves, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Richard Feynman, and many others. 

When the point of divergence comes it’s a big one.  While researching the atom bomb, the Manhattan Project team uncovers that all life on earth is doomed in 2030, when a massive solar coronal mass eruption one astronomical unit in diameter (the orbit of the earth around the sun) that they dub the solar purge will occur.

Wanting to avoid a panic, Oppenheimer assembles a dream team that grows to include some of the major scientific luminaries of the mid-20th Century, including Albert Einstein, Wernher von Bruan, and Jon von Neumann, as well as a great many of his Manhattan Project colleagues. The group named the Arbor Project works in secret even as the Cold War dawns and the Red Scare takes hold, which eventually brings about Oppenheimer’s fall from grace. The goal of Project Arbor is no less than the relocation of the human race to Mars, which falls outside the radius of the solar purge.

Here be spoilers:

Unfortunately for our heroes and the rest of the human race as it seems, Mars is not what it seems to be. Instead of the world with water flowing through the canals of Percival Lowell they had expected, they face the reality of a cratered, desert world presented to them by the images from the first space probe to reach Mars, Mariner 4, in 1965. This is almost a terminal disappointment.

Almost.  What comes next is almost – almost – out of left field. Sawyer does foreshadow what’s to come in a blink and you’ll miss it a moment, just so much that the resolution doesn’t drop out of the sky, all dues et machina when it finally happens. And that just doesn’t ring particularly true for me, which is unfortunate. 

Ultimately, with that single but significant proviso, The Oppenheimer Alternative succeeds as an alternate history story. It's much better, more demanding reading than the good half-dozen usual "what-if-the-Nazis-won" alternate history novels circulating out there I could name. 

Recommended.

 What's Next?

I have several novels I'm looking forward to reviewing over the next few months. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Book Review: Pass of Fire by Taylor Anderson

The latest entry in paperback in author Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series, is Pass of Fire. It’s the 14th  and penultimate entry in the series, which begins the set up for the events to come in the final novel, Winds of Wrath.

For newcomers to the space, the Destroymen series tells the story of the captain and crew and the crew of the aging “tin-can” World War Two destroyer USS Walker, thrust into a parallel earth, where the asteroid strike that wiped the dinosaurs never occurred.  Throughout the series Captain Matthew Reddy and his crew allied themselves with friendly Lemurians who  against the reptilian Grik, who have allied themselves with the crew of a Japanese battlecruiser, Amagi, commanded by Captain Kurokawa, whom the transition between realities has been too much who has become insane.

The series can be best seen and digested as occurring in a series of cycles that first see Reddy and his allies (who grow to include various groups of descendants of other time-lost humans) stop the Grik and then ultimately start to push them back. Other cycles introduce newer enemies including the bloodily theocratic Holy Dominion and most recently, the more technologically-advanced  fascist League of Tripoli, the latter who come from an alternate second world war.

Spoilers ahead

I’ll be upfront here. Pass of Fire is all about clearing the decks for the action to come in the concluding volume of the series. By the end of this installment, the Grik have been all but defeated, except for a small remnant commanded by General Esshek. Reddy and his allies have taken the Grik capital, and not only capturing their queen, the Celestial Mother, but making them allies as well.

But now the emphasis shifts solidly on what’s to come. News comes that the League of Tripoli has sortied its battlefleet of modern battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, in aid of its ally, the Holy Dominion.  The odds are against Reddy and the Allies who are scrambling to develop modern warships of their own.  He must gather together his scratch force which is both smaller presumably smaller in size and quality. 

For fans of the series, like myself, this and the next book will be required reading. Throughout the series and into this book, author Anderson maintained a steady narrative drumbeat. Characters continue to be refined and developed – although how much can do be done with a cast this large – is debatable, but this is a natural outcome of epic series like this. 

Strongly recommended not only for fans of the series, but for fans of the genre. If you haven’t picked up the series yet, or have put it down along the way, there’s still time for one massive binge-read.

Mea Culpa

I must apologize for missing last month’s post. I seem to be getting sloppy. I have been struggling a little bit as of late, and sometimes things do slip. I hope all of you are well and are managing in the current situation. 

What's Next?

Up next, I have a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, The Oppenheimer Alternative, which retells the story of one of the 20th century’s most influential scientists in a different light. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Apple TV+ Previews the Season Two of For All Mankind

Apple TV+ has finally dropped a teaser trailer for the long-awaited second season to For All Mankind.

If you’ll remember, For All Mankind is an alternate history story that asks what if the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon in 1969. In season one, showrunner Ronald D. Moore -  producer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica – did an excellent job in exploring the implications of this question.

Now with season two in the offing we see that Ronald Reagan is in the Oval Office and Cold War tensions are ramping up. There are astronauts on the moon carrying assault rifles and the world seems to be dancing on the knife edge. For anyone like me who lived during those times, the images brought back the feelings of low-level fear immediately. It seems all very real.

One scene that I must nit-pick is that we a space shuttle apparently returning to earth from the moon. I don’t know how that would work and even YouTube space guy Scott Manley has problems with it.  I just hope it’s not  a sign of bad things.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.   

From my bookshelf: Circumpolar! and Countersolar! by Richard A. Lupoff

Honestly, this is a pair of zany alternate history books I’ve been wanting to review for a very long time.  The Twin Planets Novels by Richard A. Lupoff - Circumpolar! and Countersolar! -take place in a universe that is very different from our own. And I mean that in a very definite way. Not only is our history different with something resembling a mercifully truncated Great War that ends in a sound Prussian defeat, but there is also “an Emperor of Australia and a President of Japan.”

Pretty good stuff, because I wouldn’t well, uh… the earth they live on is flat. As in like a pancake. And it has a hole in the centre which kind of makes it look like a giant record, with a giant ice wall at the rim.

Well, at the least the flat earthers got something right.

It’s into this familiar but out-of-joint backdrop that we are introduced to Circumpolar!, which tells the story of a Roaring Twenties around-the-world race staged between Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, and Amelia Earhart against a group of suitably dastardly Prussians including the Red Baron, Manfred von Richtofen and his brother, Lothar.  The air race takes the competitors across their side of the world, over the ice wall, and onto the other side where they encounter the mysterious ancient civilizations of the other side of the flat earth and back up through the north polar hole.  There’s a lot of fun and action to be had, including an amazing aerial sequence involving flying mechanical horses.

The sequel, Countersolar! takes place a few years later.  It’s 1942 and the world is at peace. While the world is at peace, the underlying tensions between Prussian revanchists and their backers in Peronist Argentina and the rest of the world that threaten to explode when a faint but urgent distress signal is picked up from an undiscovered counter-earth, orbiting on the far side of the sun. If you’ve accepted the concept of a flat earth at this point, the appearance of the counter-earth is one more violation of orbital mechanics that is briskly disposed of as the plot moves along. …and did I mention that the Titanic was still afloat? Lupoff takes the reader through a guided tour of the solar system, winding up on Counter-Earth, where their version of America is under threat from homegrown fascists.

Both Circumpolar! and Countersolar! are well-researched period pieces, with their backdrops and protagonists and antagonists, fictional and otherwise, finely drawn, all in the name of good fun. Lupoff invites just enough suspension of disbelief, which is the mark of a great storyteller, greater still that we get so deeply immersed in his flat-earth alternate-reality that we forget the finer things such as science.

Highly recommended. Go looking for the books online or in your local bookshop. They’re well worth your effort.

What’s Next?

First, apologies for being late with this blog.  Unfortunately, my laptop had an unplanned meeting with the floor which resulted in a  highly predictable outcome. However, the good news is that the computer has been repaired and that I am good to go again.

In terms of what’s on my review list, I have two books coming up. First, the latest novel in Taylor Anderson’s long-running Destroyermen series, Pass of Fire, and then a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, The Oppenheimer Alternative, which retells the story of one of the 20th century’s most influential scientists in a different light. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Reviewing HBO’s The Plot Against America

First, I’ll come out and say that I liked HBO’s  The Plot Against America.  The six-part miniseries based on Philip J. Roth’s 2004 alternate history novel of the same name, follows the life of a working-class Jewish family, the Levins, in Newark, New Jersey in the early 1940s as they witness the rise of Charles A.  Lindbergh to the Presidency of the United States of America.

The real Charles Lindbergh speaking at an America First Rally

The character of Charles Lindbergh is a very complex one. In our history, he was one of the leaders of the isolationist America First movement which sought to keep America out of the Second World War. It is also true he also travelled to Nazi Germany in 1938 and met with high-ranking officials of the Reich. He also upon numerous occasions had expressed anti-Semitic remarks. Historians have since come to see Lindbergh as a well-intentioned but bigoted Nazi sympathizer.  In the alternate history world, Roth and the creators of the miniseries, have not far to go in getting their man.

The Levins in an uncomfortable moment.

Like most Americans the Levins (who are modelled loosely on the author Roth’s own family),  both husband Herman (Morgan Spector) and wife Evelyn (Winona Ryder) find themselves curiously attracted to the great aviator Lindberg, because as he says on one of his stump speeches when he flies the Spirit of St. Louis to Newark, “It isn’t a choice between Lindberg and Roosevelt; it’s a choice between Lindberg and war.” 

It’s a theme that resonates enough to bring Lindberg, played by Ben Cole, into the White House.  The changes they see, the petty slights and discrimination is incremental at first and but then it begins to build: it’s almost like the story of the frog in the pot of water that is slowly brought to boil, by the time the Levins realize the trouble they’re in, it’s almost too late. 

The President and the Rabbi

The series features many strong performances by a strong cast. But one of the standout performances of the series by John Turturro who plays Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, who sells his soul to get in good with the new administration. He conceives of a plan to resettle Jewish families. Curiously, he is blind to see the monumentality of his betrayal until he finds ultimately himself betrayed. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Herman’s nephew Alvin (Anthony Boyle), who joins the Canadian Army in violation of neutrality laws, only to come home wounded to a country that has changed. Although the story is told from the point of view of the extended Levin family, we still get telling glimpses of the changed world around them, with newsreel footage of Lindbergh shaking hands with Hitler in a secret meeting in Iceland, signing a non-aggression pact, which is a twisted fun-house version of the Roosevelt -Churchill meeting and the signing of the Atlantic Charter.

Without giving away too much, the ending is left in doubt, which is a departure from the source novel. It’s not too much to say that the show’s producers intended the series to be a reflection of the current situation in the United States, which has seen a resurgence of isolationism,  anti-Semitism and with the rise of the so-called alt-right, fascism. Perhaps recent years have stripped away the thin veneer and have revealed what had been lying there all along, under the surface. In the alternate history of the series, it takes a man like Charles Lindbergh to bring out the worst in people; in our world, all it took was the election of Donald Trump.

Alternate history in its best form, raises an interrogative mirror to our world  and allows us to not only ask what if, but also, if this goes on. The Plot Against America holds such a mirror to our uncertain times and allows us to ask not only these questions, but more. 

Highly recommended viewing.

What’s next?
I apologize with lateness of this blog post. Like many people with onset of COVID-19, I am now working from home.  I found have found it difficult to manage and deal with the circumstances around us.

Next month, I’ll be back with another post. Until that time, please look after each other and yourselves.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  Thanks.